


(As Long As) I Got You

by Daylise



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ark AU, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Guard Bellamy, Protective Wells, Romance, Slow Burn, The Ark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 09:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4661499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daylise/pseuds/Daylise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Clarke meets Bellamy for the first time on the Ark when she is 15, and suddenly he's all she can think about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hung in a bad place

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So, another Bellarke fanfic! I'm really excited about this one. English is not my mother language, so I’m sorry for any mistake. This is an Ark AU - there is no The 100 project. Probably a lot of fluff. And angst too. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I definitely don’t own the characters. 
> 
> Enjoy! (Fanfic writers are paid in reviews! :P)

 

“Hung in a Bad Place”

(or “first meet”)

 

 

She had never been on Factory Station in her entire life. 

She was born in what other people would have called the “upper classes”, not even trying to hide their annoyance pronouncing those words. Her perception of the life on the Ark was only confined to her quarters, where she lived with her family, and a few other nearby stations, that happened to be in her way to school or medical apprenticeship. And maybe it was because her mother was overprotective, or maybe she just wasn’t so interested, but in fact, she had never visited the poorest and most miserable part of the Ship. Or, at least, she hadn’t until that day. 

With the approbation of Councilor Jaha (which was only obtained after great efforts and prays), the school principal organized a Charity Flea Market which deliberately coincided with the Unity Day. All the students were welcomed to enjoy the market, by chairing at the stands or just donating money; then all the founds would have gone to inhabitants of Factory Station and all the most needy families, those who officially had an income well below their needs. 

(And on the Ark there were many of them. They were far more than the Council would have ever been willing to admit.)

By the time she heard the news, 15-year-old Clarke Griffin had immediately though that it was a great idea. Maybe she wasn’t informed about the life on Factory in details, but she had a general picture of the whole situation, and if she could do something to help, she was glad to go with it.  

For this reason, she was one of the four people who actually volunteered to organize the stands. They had the task of selling food (strawberries and such other dishes that no one ever had a chance to eat), drinks, toys, clothes and so on. The plan was to place the flea market on Factory, so that people had to visit it if they wanted to see the stands too - in order to “ensure a greater unity among the people”, or at least so said the Principal. 

Clarke was just happy to do something good and a little different by her daily routine. She had to argue with Abby for a while, and even Wells tried to change her mind (they could have celebrate Unity Day with both their families, like they always did), but eventually she obtained her mother’s permission and politely declined all Well’s propositions. 

And before anyone got the chance to change her mind, she found herself on the workplace, behind a stand full of sweaters and dresses somewhere in a hallway on Factory It wasn’t until lunch, when the Councilor’s traditional speech in the main hall was probably over, that people began to arrive. 

Clarke was a sociable person by nature. She hadn’t many friends, but strangely, she was genuinely spontaneous in interacting with other people (her father liked to use this fact as an excuse to brag about her, stating fiercely that this proved her as being a natural leader, but she always objected him). She found very simple and pleasant to talk friendly with the people who rushed into the stands, most of them smiling, with faces full of a sense of hope that Clarke was able to see only in that particular day of the year. 

She recognized some well known faces; at some point, even the Councilor and her wife enjoyed the crowd around the stands. 

All went well. For a dreamy teenager like her, Factory wasn’t that bad at all. Or so she though, until a noisy group of guys made his entrance among the small crowd. 

Too busy in making gift packs, Clarke gave them the least of her attention. She honestly barely notice them. But then one of them cleared his voice and muttered “ _privileged_ ”, enough loud to make some people turn their heads in his direction. And Clarke heard him, too. She was suddenly well aware of the target with her name and surname that the Principal had made her and the others students stick on their shirts. 

_Clarke Griffin, Sector A. Alpha Station_.

It seemed to shine like a neon sign in the middle of the desert. 

She looked up, startled, and he just laughed with the others. With that, she was sure to whom the insult was for (not that she had many doubts before). 

“Little visit to the slums?” continued the guy scornfully. She just ignored him.

“How does it feels to walk among the _plebs_?” asked another. 

Clarke kept doing what she was doing, without any other look in their direction. But she felt their eyes on her, and even if they were in hall full of people, she started to feel exposed. And the feeling definitely got worse when another guy of that crew actually approached her stand. 

She wanted to disappear. Why couldn’t they just leave her be? She began to breathe a little fanatically, but then she realized he was probably going to notice and make some cruel jokes about that too, so she decided do face him instead.

_C'mon, Clarke. You don’t really fear them_.

“What can I do for you?” She asked as gently as possible, finally raising her eyes on him: he was tall, with olive skin and curly black hair. He was probably a few years older than her. At least, he wasn’t one of the two who had mocked her before.

“You can go away” he said, the hostility highly marked on his face. Someone in the room had turned on a radio, so this time, with the music that hovered among the crowd, no one else heard him. 

“I’m not going to do that” she replied, angry. Who the hell he though he was? “I’m here for a reason, and if you’re not going to buy anything, then  _you_  can go - ”

“You shouldn’t be here anyway” he stated abruptly, “this is no place for a princess like you.”

She stared. “A  _what_?" 

He grinned. She decided that he didn’t scared her, but he definitely bothered her very much. "You really should go” he said, instead of answering her, “You’re not very welcomed, you know. Those guys there, they’re gonna make your presence here very troubled.”

Clarke frowned. “Alright then. I love challenges.” She didn’t even know where all that badassness came from, she was just glad to have it in that moment. 

A group of bullies wasn’t going to ruin such a perfect day for her and all of those people. The black-haired guy stared at her, like he didn’t believe she was real. And then he surprisingly chuckled, like she had just said something very very funny. She frowned. Was that supposed to be some kind of mockery or - ?

“Whatever you want” he muttered, the surprise on his face quickly replaced by an impassive expression. " _Princess_ " he added with a small smirk, as if he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to scoff at her. “See y'a around.”

And with that, he just went away. 

Clarke watched startled as the black-haired annoying boy said something to his friends, and then she could only stared when they all walked away, some of them giving her a few defiant looks before disappearing behind the hallway.

Eventually, she shrugged, still confused, and tried her best to pretend that nothing happened. 

Three hours later she was tired and labored, but she had earned a lot of money, and she couldn’t be more satisfied. The Principal congratulated to her and the others for their work ( _“I’ll tell your mother how good you’ve been today, Clarke, she will be very proud of you”_ ). At the end of the day, back in her quarters, Clarke cheerfully told Wells about the beautiful flea market, skipping just one thing or two so that he wouldn’t be worried (he didn’t have to know about  _all of it_ , after all, did he?).

But when she laid in her bed and closed her eyes, she couldn’t remove the image of the annoying, cocky black-haired guy from her mind. 


	2. I Hope, I Think, I Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clarke just can't stand his cockiness, but then realizes that he is isn't so bad. Well, for a dumbass, he isn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter, yay! It's longer than I expected, but I'm quite satisfied of the result. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

She was 16 when she met him for the second time. 

Her hair was longer (now she kept it tied in a braid all the time) and she was a little taller (not very much, but it was still an improvement, she though). But most importantly, she was more stubborn than ever. 

The problem was, Clarke had always had a strong sense of justice; there were some moral bonds that delimited her own little reality, that defined whether was right or wrong. Black or white, good or bad. No middle ways.

And that was one of the reasons why she was stuck in somewhere on Factory again, standing up in all her height trying to face a boy who was shamefully bigger than her. But she had to, she reminded herself one more time. The guy, Jason Roche, had always felt a guilty pleasure into bullying over little kids, and this time his target was no one else then Tommy Backer, a 11-year-old that used to attend her mother's surgery. 

This had to stop once for all, and if no one wasn't going to do anything about it, Clarke would have solve the situation by herself, even if that meant having troubles with a selfish arrogant like Roche.

(Jason never punched anyone, though. On the Ark, violence was punished with a one-way ticket to the Skybox if you were lucky enough to be underage; otherwise, you'd been executed without even get a trial. But insults were unpunished, and Clarke knew that some words hurt just like a fist.)

"I'm telling you this for the last time, Jason" she threatened. But she wasn't going very well with the intimidating thing, considering how he continued to roll his eyes to the sky as she talked. "You're not going to bother Tommy ever again. It's not right to treat people like that. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"Yeah, right - "

"And stop putting up that stupid attitude" Clarke trow him a cold glance, and he snorted. "You're gonna tell him you're sorry."

Jason was more bored than ever. "Stop this, Griffin. You're wasting your breath."

"Listen to me -"

"What's going on here?"

Both Clarke and Jason turned around, and when she saw him, her stomach jumped in surprise. She remembered him. Honestly, for some absurd reasons, he had never really slipped out of her mind. 

He was wearing a guard uniform now, a cadet one to be precisely, and Clarke wondered why it seemed so strange to her seeing him in it. 

"Nothing" Jason muttered.

Her face went all red; she glanced at him so angrily that he stepped back. "He was bullying over a little kid" she growled, "And I was teaching him a goddamn lesson."

"Wow, okay, easy" curly-haired boy started, stepping between them. "Were you really bullying over a kid?" he asked Jason, who seemed to be a little scared by him. Of course he was. Everyone on Walden was a little scared by the guards.

"I...uh..."

"He was" Clarke stated.

Curly-haired boy raised an eyebrow. "How old are you, boy?"

"Sixteen."

"Then you really should leave the kids be. Take it with those of your size."

Clarke glanced. _What the hell?_ "Are you serious?"

He frowned. "Yeah, I am."

"You can't just instigate people to _bullying_ , you know that, right?"

"I'm instigating him to act like a man" curly-haired boy responded with a shrug.

Clarke shook her head; what was it, Asshole Day? She couldn't believe this was really happening. "You are so full of yourself, aren't you? That uniform you're wearing, it means that you're supposed to be a good example for the others, not do whatever you want with your authority."

Jason slowly stood back, as curly-haired boy gave an exasperated look to Clarke.

"Don't tell me how to do my job, I know that, thank you."

Jason took his chance and nonchalantly walked away from them; however, they were too busy arguing to notice. 

"Well, it doesn't seem so."

The boy stared at her for a couple of seconds, then let out a little laugh, like a bark. "How can someone so small be such a big pain in the ass?"

She froze. "You....You're..." _damn_. She was so furious that she couldn't even say in words all the things (really bad things) that she thought of him in that moment. She opened her mouth once again, ready to split out an insult, but then she remembered he was a guard while she was just a young girl, and it really wasn't worth it to put herself into troubles for that idiot.

So she turned away instead, never glancing back even when he laughed and called after her "goodbye, _princess_!", proving that he remembered their first meeting too. 

She hoped to never see him again.

 

\- 0 -

 

At seventeen years old, Clarke almost forgot about the curly-haired boy, but then destiny (or her stupidity, probably) decided that it was time for them to meet again. 

 

_"This isn't a good idea" Wells told her for what it seemed the fiftieth time that day._

_"Why do you always have to be so distrustful?"_

_"Because it is my job to prevent you from doing anything stupid" he replied with a smile, "that's what best friends do."_

_Clarke approached to give him a little kiss on his cheek. "And I'm thankful for that. You should trust me though, you know."_

_"I know" Wells sighed, knowing that he couldn't really argue with her. "Just try not to put yourself into troubles, okay?"_

 

Thinking about it now, Clarke knew that Wells was right, but she was way to much determinate to give up.

Anyway, this was one of the stupidest ideas she'd ever had, and she was well aware of that. And there was a very good explanation for her to be there now, right in front of him, with a stolen book in one hand and a guilty expression on her face. To be precise, she had not really _stolen_ it. She just borrowed it, that's all. Actually, she was planning to return it to the library the next week. 

But he had seen her while she was stealthy taking the book from a shelf, and even if she would have tried to explain, she was sure he wouldn't have believed a word.

He was even taller now, muscular, and he looked more like a man than like a boy. He had something else different, too; yet Clarke wasn't able to state precisely what it was. 

"I didn't know princesses had to steal in their castles" he grumbled roughly when he saw her face. 

There it was, that stupid nickname. It was a clear reference to her social status - Clarke knew that for sure now. She had grown up, and she'd learned to see things more clearly, to observe the details that she'd never noticed before. Like what happened on Factory and the other poor stations, or how the Council meetings increasingly ended with her mother being furious and her father being worried. 

But a part of her couldn't hide the surprise knowing that he had recognized her once again. 

"I'm not stealing" she pointed, quite scared. Steal was a serious crime, one of those things that could send her right into the Skybox if she was accused to. However, it was just a book. Most of the guards passed over such things all the time. It wasn't like she had taken food or medicines or whatever. It was a damn _book_. _And she was not stealing it._  "And my name is not princess."

Curly-haired boy raised an eyebrow.

Well. Considering their last meeting, he probably wasn't a big fan of her, so she tried again. "Look, I'm just...I would've take it back in a week" she sighed. "I guess I'm leaving it right here, though. I don't need it so much, after all..."

But he gently stopped her arm before she could put it on the shelf. "Here, keep it. It's not a big deal."

Clarke watched him silently for a moment, trying to read his face. "Really?"

He smiled at her excitement. "Really."

Clarke could have hugged him right now, but she had enough discretion to keep her to do that. 

"Why do you feel the urge to take it out of here, anyway?" He asked, not bothering to hide his curiosity .

He had a point. Those books were literally the only ones currently existing, because their ancestors saved them from the Apocalypse; for this reason, the Constitution established precise rules about how to take care of them. And since air and time could have ruined the pages, no one was allowed to take them out of the library.

After another unsure look, she decided that she had no other choice but trust him on this. She had already been caught, there was no way she could have make her situation worst. She sighed. "It's for a friend. She can't come here, and I though it was nice to bring it to her."

And it was the truth, mostly. Her friend actually happened to be her patient, Sarah, one of the sick people of which Clarke took care during her medical apprenticeship. 

Curly-haired boy just nodded, focusing on her words. She decided to take her opportunity to vanish before he could change his mind (even if he didn't seem that kind of guy). She smiled softly and whispered a "thank you", before walking away with the book.

Maybe he wasn't the dumbass, cocky guy that she though he was; or maybe she should just stop imagine about people she didn't even know. 

But that evening, watching silently at Sarah who was all distracted in reading, Clarke found herself frowning at the though that she didn't even know his name yet. 

 


End file.
